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Justice Dept. Joins Complaint Against For-Profit Chain

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The U.S. Justice Department announced last week that it is joining a whistle-blower lawsuit against ATI Enterprises Inc., which owns a chain of for-profit career colleges in Texas. State authorities have already revoked the licenses for some of the programs to operate. The government's complaint alleges that ATI misrepresented job placement statistics in order to keep state approval in place.

Further, the complaint states that that "ATI employees at the three campuses knowingly enrolled students who were ineligible because they did not have high school diplomas or recognized equivalents; falsified high school diplomas, including five Dallas Independent School District diplomas for students who later defaulted on their federal student loans; fraudulently kept students enrolled even though they should have been dropped because they had poor grades or attendance; and made knowing misrepresentations to students about their future employability. The alleged misrepresentations included telling students that a criminal record would not prevent them from getting jobs in their fields of study, quoting higher salaries than the students would be likely to earn and reporting inflated job placement statistics both to the students and the Texas Workforce Commission."